W.E.B. Griffin - The Corps V - Line of Fire

Steve made a cutting motion across his throat. It would take him a couple of minutes, at least, to decode the message. Ian Bruce needed a break.

And a bath. I can smell him from here.

"Bloody hell!" Ian Bruce said.

"See if you can find Lieutenant Howard, will you?"

"Right you are." Both Lieutenant Howard and Sub-Lieutenant Reeves came into the hut before Steve finished decoding the message.

"What the hell is this?" he asked, giving the decoded message to Howard.

USE AS SIMPLE SUBSTITUTION X JULIETS NAME X ROMEOS NAME X WHAT SHE THOUGHT HE HAD WHEN

THEY MET X NAME OF TEST X RESULT OF TEST X

18xl9xO9x37xll

15x23xO8xO9xll

OlxO2xO3xO4xO5

06xO7x23x3lxO5

"They've gone sodding bonkers," Sub-Lieutenant Reeves said, and then added an unpleasant afterthought. "You don't think this could be from our Nipponese churns, do you?" Steve shook his head. "No," he said. "I recognized his hand."

"I know what simple substitution is," Joe Howard said, and so should you. But who the hell is Romeo?"

"It would have to be our lad, here," Reeves said. "Neither you nor I are romantically involved at the moment."

"Lay off him," Howard said.

"No offense, Steve, my lad."

"Go fuck yourself," Steve said. "What does that `what she thought he had when they met' mean?"

"I think I know," Howard said.

He dropped to the dirt floor. They had two pads of message paper left.

He picked up one of them. Holding it on his knees, he wrote:

BarbaraJosephSyphilisWassermanNegative

"My girl's name is Barbara," he said. "Mine is Joseph. I was taking my pre-commissioning physical in San Diego, and the doctor thought I was lying when I told him I'd never had VD.

He sent me to the VD ward for a Wasserman."

"I have the oddest feeling that he actually believes he knows what he's doing," Lieutenant Reeves said.

"Barbara was the nurse on duty," Joe added.

Very carefully, he wrote numbers under the letters. When he finished, it looked like this:

BarbaraJosephSyphilisWassermanNegative

12345678901234567890123456789012345678

Then he recopied the numbers so there was space beneath them, and made the translation.

18x19x09x37x11

I l o v e

15x23xO8xO9xll

y a j o e

OlxO2xO3xO4xO5

b a r b a

06xO7x23x3lxO5

r a a n a

"Does that say anything?" Reeves asked.

"Yeah," Joe Howard whispered.

He wrote out two five-character blocks of numbers and handed them to Steve.

"You up?"

"No."

"I'll pump the goddamned bicycle. You get on the air and send that."

"What the hell does it say?" Reeves asked.

"What they sent says, `I love ya, Joe Barbara,' " Steve Koffler said.

"The last three letters are fillers, to fill the five-character block.

What he's replying is none of your business." The dials came to life.

Steve's hand worked the key.

FRD1, FRD6. FRD1, FRD6.

Coastwatcher Radio, this is Ferdinand Six.

FRD6, FRD1, GA.

Ferdinand Six, go ahead.

Steve sent the reply, and then showed it to Reeves.

28x38x25x10x10

M e T o o

OlxO2xO4xl5xO5

B a b y a

Townsville came right back:

FRD6, FRD1. AK

lOx23x28x32xlO

35x38x37x38xOl

02xl2xl3x3Ox38

END

FRD1, FRD6. AK. SB.

Coastwatcher Radio, acknowledged. Standing by

"Go pump the bike," Steve said. "Let him decode this.

Maybe there's more." There was:

3OxO2x35xl3xO7

31x17x11x19x22

Steven sent the reply:

FRDI, FRD6. AK. MORE??

The reply came immediately:

FRD1. CLR.

"That's it," Steve said as he made the cutting motion across his throat.

Reeves stopped pumping.

Steve turned the radio off, stood up, and handed the last message to Howard. After that he hovered over Howard, watching him as he finished decoding the previous message.

10x23x28x32x10

S A M E S

35x38x37x38xOl

T E V E B

02xl2xl3x3Ox38

A P H N E

"What the hell does that say?"

"'Same Steve, signed Daphne,"' Howard said.

"Daphne is spelled with a `D,' not a `B,"' Steve said.

"There's no `B' in the substitution, Steve," Howard solid.

"What sounds closest?"

He started working on the final block of numbers and finally handed that to Steve.

"Take a look at that, Jacob," Howard said. "What do you make of it?"

30x02x35x13x07

N A T H A

31xl7xllxl9x22

N I E L W

17xl9xl9xlOx22

I L L S E

26x16x23x26x11

E P A T I

38x3lxl4xllx24

E N S E S

09xO9x3lxO2xO7

O O N A A

"Nathaniel Willseep At?" Reeves asked. "What the bloody hell is `ienses'?"

"Nathaniel will see Patience soon," Howard said.

"There's no `C' in Patience," Steve said.

"Same thing. You use what you have, in this case an `S.' The question is, who is Nathaniel? And what the hell does it mean?" They found Miss Patience Witherspoon washing Steve's spare utility trousers on a rock in the stream. Nathaniel Wallace turned out to be one of her friends when she was at the Mission School.

"Do you know where he is now?" Reeves asked.

"Yes, Sir. He was sent to Australia just before the war to enroll in King's College. Nathaniel is very intelligent. He did very well in school."

"And did Nathaniel know you were going into the bush with me?" Reeves asked very carefully.

"I sent him a note with the St. James, " Patience said. "Asking him to pray for us."

"What?" Howard asked.

"The St. James was the last ship to leave here before the Japanese came," Reeves said. "It wasn't a ship, really, more like a powered launch."

"Bingo," Howard said. "We are about to be reinforced." He'd caught himself just in time. He was about to say "relieved."

"Is that what you think?" Reeves asked.

"They must know our radio is on its last legs," Howard said.

"And that we need supplies."

"But why take the risk of letting us know someone's coming?"

"So we'll be on the lookout for parachutes, prepared to receive them."

"You think they'd do that again?"

"There's no other way."

"And the Japs know it," Reeves said. "And they're looking for parachutes. And when they break that child's code of yours, they'll really be looking."

"That child's code isn't going to be as easy to break as you think," Howard said. "It'll take them a couple of days... when they start on it. And then they have to guess the meaning."

"Submarine," Steve Koffler said. "They could send people in by submarine."

"I don't think so, Steve," Howard said. "I think we should start looking for an airplane, and parachutes. Even, if they could talk the Navy out of a submarine, and they managed to land somebody safely, how could he get here? Especially carrying replacement radios and equipment?"

"He's from here," Steve said. "This Nathaniel is."

"Nathaniel is very intelligent," Miss Patience Witherspoon said. "And very strong."

[Five]

ROYAL AUSTRALIAN NAVY COASTWATCHER ESTABLISHMENT

TOWNSVILLE, QUEENSLAND

1 OCTOBER 1942

"We'll get into specific details later," Major Edward F. Banning said to open the first briefing session for Operation PICKLE, "so please don't start asking questions until I'm finished." Just over twenty people were sitting around the tables of the mess hall, Australians of the Coastwatcher Establishment and Marines of Special Detachment 14. Some were drinking coffee and eating doughnuts. The majority were drinking beer.

"The RAN is going to provide us with a submarine, HMAS Pelican. It will take a replacement team to this beach...." He turned and pointed to a map of Buka with an eighteen-inch ruler.

"... According to Chief Wallace, it's approximately fifty yards wide at low tide and has a relatively gradual slope. And again according to Chief Wallace, it is a twenty-four- to thirty-six-hour march from Ferdinand Six, which is about here. I asked him to err on the side of caution. Carrying that equipment in that terrain is going to be a bitch.